The Gethsemane Prayer

On a recent BBC's Songs of Praise programme, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, told of the harrowing time of his daughter's death following a road accident. As her life slipped away he confessed that the nature of his prayers changed to match those of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. From praying for her survival he asked that God's will be done, as did Jesus before his death and repeated since at each rendition of the Lord's Prayer.

There can be no denying the sincerity and piety of Welby but his cofession demonstrates the problem one has in persuading the religious community that there is a spiritual side to mankind but one without God. In praying, 'That God's will be done' he is effectively saying or asking that nature will take its course. It reminds me of the song:

Que sera sera,

Whatever will be, will be,

The future's not mine to see,

Que sera sera.

The blogger, (His Grace) Cranmer said in his blog;

Archbishop Justin has come to build, teach, preach, train, supervise, maintain and act. And the task is urgent, for we are sinking in a morass of cant, hypocrisy, double standards, cold formality and the denial of reality - not only outside the Church but within it. He is right in much of what he says but, 'denial of reality'? Do me a favour! It is the Church that is denying reality, insisting that the 'Truth' is anything but that. If Archbishop Justin is to build, teach, train, supervise, maintain and act then before he preaches he must re-examine his stance on prayer. He told the programme that prayer was at the heart of the Church and if one didn't have prayer, one had nothing or words to that effect. After billions of prayers to the Jewish god of Abraham, the holocaust occurred: after trillions of prayers to the Muslim God of Abraham, look at the current state of Gaza: after trillions of prayers to the Christian God of Abraham, the Anglicans still can't decide on the role of women in the Church. Don't tell me that prayer works above the statistical levels of probability because I simply don't believe it and therein lies the problem. To my mind, Archbishop Justin must take the God out of religion and replace it with another spirituality - that of mankind itself and promote, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed as prime examples of Goodness and Virtue.Maybe, just maybe,he may then draw people into the pews; appeal to those disillusioned with religions whose servants sodomise youngsters and those whose adherents kill women and children of differing faiths through blind intolerance.

Good luck Archbishop Welby (and Francis I) and peace be with you.